As a blogger, I subscribe to the email lists of some organizations whose goals I do not, shall we say, necessarily embrace. Among them is Organizing For Action, the successor to the 2012 Obama campaign. As you can imagine, although I read OFA's messages with interest, I don't succumb to its frequent appeals for funds. You might think OFA might let me loaf along on its list, but no. Just now arrived an email I'd call kind of creepy. Start with the subject line [emphasis added throughout]: "Mark: Not an OFA donor". Whoah: so this is not just a generic...

<p>Members of Congress have been repeatedly thwarted when attempting to learn basic information about the National Security Agency (NSA) and the secret FISA court which authorizes its activities, documents provided by two House members demonstrate.</p>
<p>From the beginning of the NSA controversy, the agency's defenders have insisted that Congress is aware of the disclosed programs and exercises robust supervision over them. "These programs are subject to congressional oversight and congressional reauthorization and congressional debate," President Obama said the day after the first story on NSA bulk collection of phone records was published in this space. "And if there are members of Congress who feel differently, then they should speak up."</p>

N.Y. comptroller trying to force disclosure of political spending by corporations to cut off funding for conservativesNew York state is quickly becoming ground zero in the fight over free speech and corporate political spending as a top state official with ties to left-wing campaign finance reform groups attempts to pressure private companies into making their political contributions public.New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who is the state’s top accountant and is spearheading the campaign, cites the importance of transparency.Observers warn that “shareholder activism” in pursuit of political disclosure represents the first stage of coordinated intimidation campaigns against private companies conducted...

The Obama administration is attempting to bypass Congress and force publicly-traded companies to reveal their political donations through regulation. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporate Finance has begun the steps necessary to create a regulation that would in many ways mirror the DISCLOSE Act — a bill Senate Democrats have failed to pass through Congress. Created in reaction to the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that said corporations and unions could not have limits placed on their political expenditures, the Senate bill would require political organizations to publicly name their donors and the amounts they give. The...

Peter Schweizer’s Government Accountability Institute is out with a report today on foreign and fraudulent campaign contributions. It is the most comprehensive treatment of the issue to date. The key findings relate to the Obama campaign: * The Obama campaign lacks the “industry standard level” of credit card security for donations * The website Obama.com was purchased by an Obama bundler based in Shanghai, China, with questionable ties to state-run enterprises * 68% of the traffic to Obama.com is foreign, and the site was linked to a specific donation page on the official BarackObama.com campaign website for ten months Schweizer...

A draft executive order from the White House that would force government contractors to disclose their political contributions is drawing consternation from K Street. Lobbyists sees the latest move by the Obama administration as another attempt to limit their influence in Washington, and it follows a series of policies signed off by the president that have targeted them. Howard Marlowe, president of the American League of Lobbyists, told The Hill that the draft order that has been circulated around Washington would be “bad public policy.” “This is really bad public policy to be asking people to state what contributions they...

THE WOODLANDS, Texas — A paid obituary for a Houston-area man who died of cancer recently urged mourners to, in lieu of flowers, "please make a donation to ANYONE running against" President Barack Obama. ....[James] Harrison was a retired food-service worker. John Rundlof, his stepson, told KRIV-TV of Houston that Harrison "was an avid Republican and just took that to the grave with him." Rundlof said Harrison wrote the appeal for donations to Obama opponents himself before he died.

[snip] On his MSNBC show this evening, Ed Schultz asserted that corporations donate 1000 times more money to political campaigns than unions do. Or as Ed said, in his inimitably muddled manner,: "unions contribute 1/10th of 1% of their money that corporations put into campaigns. Now think about that: 1/10th of 1%. You got the corporate money over here you've got the organized labor money over here." How off is Ed? The National Review's Rich Lowry has documented that in the last election cycle, three unions alone kicked in $170 million to Dem coffers. So corporations would have had to...

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt blew nearly $560,000 in campaign cash last year - much of it on lavish meals and a family-friendly payroll that includes his ex-wife, son-in-law and daughter - stoking speculation the Quincy Democrat is emptying his war chest and won’t seek re-election. Nickolai Bobrov, who is married to Delahunt’s daughter Kara, has raked in $47,732 since landing on the payroll as the congressman’s campaign manager in July, including a $10,000 payment that month marked retroactive for “consulting services April-July,” according to campaign finance records. Bobrov also is listed as treasurer of Delahunt’s Campaign for Change political action...

The explosive growth in online political contributions is helping to make this the most expensive presidential campaign in history. But lost in the money pipeline is the cost of point-and-click donations. An Arizona Republic analysis of campaign expense records shows that organizations that process credit-card transactions have collected more than $11 million in fees for handling Internet contributions and related services. Candidates in both parties, including the three major candidates still in the race, have divided the processing fees among several organizations, with some turning to openly partisan sources to process the bulk of their donations, the analysis shows. One...

Peter F. Paul, the flamboyant Hollywood entrepreneur who says Hillary Rodham Clinton has hidden almost $2 million of in-kind contributions he made to her campaign in 2000, is back from Brazil and promising to raise a ruckus about the New York senator as he fights bizarre securities and bank-fraud charges on which he's been indicted. Aaron Tonken, a political operative in Hollywood and a former protégé of Paul under indictment for a variety of alleged sharp deals with the rich and famous, also is promising to tell everything he knows about behind-the-scenes shenanigans of Clinton and many others. Meanwhile, the...

Circumventing Money Limits in Md. Campaigns Donors Can Contribute Funds To Parties' Special Accounts By Matthew Mosk Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 30, 2002; Page A01 Florida lawyer Kathleen L. Crotty was so eager to support Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's bid to become Maryland's next governor, she flew to Washington in May to attend a $1,000-a-person fundraiser at the home of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Townsend's uncle. But when she arrived at the senator's stately mansion, Crotty feared she would be unable to donate, having already given Townsend $4,000, the maximum that Maryland campaign finance laws allow. So on...

Working families from Malibu to East Hampton Having dragged a group of Manhattan elites back from the Hamptons last week to attend a fund-raiser at a tony Chelsea night club, Al Gore criticized the Bush administration for "working on behalf of the powerful, and letting the people of this country get the short end of the stick." Back when he was exhibiting the Democrats' renowned good sportsmanship after he lost the presidential election, Gore managed to fund his tantrum with donations sent in from such ordinary Americans as dot-com multimillionaire Steven Kirsch ($500,000), former Slim-Fast Foods chief S. Daniel Abraham...